This publication presents the key results of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) for the years 1998-99 to 2006-07. Work on the TSA has been funded by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (RET).

CHANGES IN THIS ISSUE

TSA estimates for 1997-98 are not included in the paper version of this publication. The complete TSA time series from 1997-98 to 2006-07 is available on the data cube associated with this publication on the ABS website.

REVISIONS

Following the release of the 2005-06 Australian National Accounts: Tourism Satellite Account (cat. no. 5249.0) and consultation with users, several of the sources and methods used to compile the TSA have been reviewed and improved.

An improved method for calculating outbound tourism has been implemented. The new method makes full use of detailed expenditure data on outbound travel from Tourism Research Australia (TRA) and replaces a modelled estimate based on 1997-98 data. For 2005-06 this improvement decreased domestic consumption by 1.2%, with higher revisions at the product level e.g. Accommodation increased 3.8% due to the implementation of TRA outbound data.

Improvements have been made to the allocation of total economy imports to tourism products. These improvements resulted in an increase in the level of imports purchased in Australia by visitors across the TSA time series. For the 2003-04 benchmark year, there was a 12.6% increase.

Revised demand side data from NVS and IVS has been incorporated.

These changes have been combined with the data from the latest supply and use tables for 2003-04 to produce a new benchmark with respect to 2003-04. As a result, this issue contains the full set of tables, some of which are normally only published every third year.

When compared to the TSA estimates released in May 2007, the tourism share of GVA has been revised down in all years by up to 0.1 percentage points. The tourism share of GDP has been revised down by a similar percentage.

DATA VALUES AND ROUNDING

All values, unless otherwise indicated, are shown in Australian dollars rounded to the nearest million. Where figures have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between the sums of the component items and totals.

NEXT ISSUE

The 2007-08 issue of this publication is expected to be released in April 2009.

INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Steve Whennan on Canberra (02) 6252 6711.